Radio Kuwait: English from the Gulf on 15540 kHz

What you hear

Between 18:00 and 21:00 UTC, 15540 kHz carries Radio Kuwait's English programme. The format is an old-fashioned external service: news bulletins, a magazine about life in Kuwait, talks on Islam, and a lot of music. The music is the part that surprises first-time listeners, because it swings between Western pop and rock of several decades and Kuwaiti and wider Arabic songs, sometimes within the same hour. The presenters speak a calm, slightly formal English, and station identifications come as "This is Radio Kuwait" with a short musical signature. During Ramadan the religious share grows and the music thins out.

The signal itself is what you expect from a big Gulf transmitter: a solid carrier, wide audio, and a sound that is clean rather than crisp. Outside the English hours the frequency may carry Arabic programming or stay silent, because the Arabic services of Radio Kuwait use other channels in the 19 and 16 metre bands, and the schedule is shuffled with the seasons.

Who transmits and why

Radio Kuwait is the radio service of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information and has been the country's state broadcaster since the early 1950s. Its shortwave transmitters stand at Kabd, in the desert south-west of Kuwait City. The English service exists for the usual reasons a Gulf state keeps one: it presents the country to listeners abroad, and it serves the large foreign workforce at home for whom English is the common language. The evening block is aimed at Europe and, later in the hour, at North America, which is why a frequency in the 19 metre band was chosen: it carries far at that time of day while the band is still open.

What the station does not do is DRM or anything exotic. It is plain AM, the way shortwave broadcasting was done for most of the twentieth century, and that is part of the charm.

When and where to listen

The English hours are 18:00 to 21:00 UTC, which is early evening in Europe. From the Gulf the path to Europe crosses the Middle East and the Balkans, and 15540 kHz holds up well in that direction while there is daylight somewhere along the route. In summer and autumn the whole three hours are usable from most of Europe; in deep winter the 19 metre band can fade before the programme ends, so the first hour is the safer bet. Receivers in south-eastern and central Europe hear it best. A receiver in the Gulf region itself gives a local-strength signal with none of the fading, if you only want to hear the programme rather than the propagation.

The catalogue mode is AM. If a neighbour on 15535 or 15545 kHz splatters into the audio, switch to upper or lower sideband and keep the clean side of the carrier; the voice stays intelligible and the music loses only a little.

In ShackDeck

In the program the station sits under Station catalogue → Shortwave broadcast → Radio Kuwait. Click it and ShackDeck finds a public receiver whose tuning range covers 15540 kHz, tunes it and sets AM, the mode stored in the catalogue. You need no receiver, antenna or account of your own; if the chosen receiver is busy or hears nothing on the band, ask for the next one. Try it a little after 18:00 UTC, when the identification and the first news bulletin make it obvious you have the right station.